Chapter 7 - The Lavish Dinner Party of Wicked Smiles
A collective gasp rippled through the fifty guests gathered in the living room. Glasses of champagne paused halfway to people’s lips. Paige, who was standing near the fireplace holding a crystal flute, turned pale.
"What... what is the meaning of this joke?" Margaret stammered, looking frantically around the room before glaring at me. "Travis! What is going on? Tell your friends to stop this nonsense! You're humiliating us in front of our guests!"
I stepped forward into the center of the room, standing shoulder to shoulder with Captain Vance. The eyes of every neighbor, every country club acquaintance, and every local official were locked on me.
"This isn't a joke, Mother," I said, my voice cutting through the room with the sharp clarity of a commander on a battlefield. "Four years ago, I deployed overseas. Every single month, I sent my combat pay home to provide for my wife, Gwen, and to secure our future. Over that time, I sent over $94,000."
Margaret’s face flushed red. "Yes! And we built this beautiful home with it! For all of us!"
"You didn't build it for all of us," I replied evenly. "You built it for yourself and Paige. And while you were using my paychecks to buy designer bags and luxury pickup trucks, where was my wife?"
Silence, heavy and suffocating, descended upon the room.
"She’s... she’s resting upstairs, Travis!" Margaret lied frantically, her voice pitching higher. "She’s sick with a common cold, I told you!"
"No, she isn't," I said.
I turned toward the back hallway. The service door opened, and Eleanor Ross gently guided Gwen into the living room.
A horrified hush swept across the crowd.
Gwen was wearing a simple, clean dress, but she could not hide the reality of her condition. Her frail, skeletal frame was visible to everyone. Her head was completely bare, the pale scalp marked with tiny cuts. The dark circles under her sunken eyes and the fresh surgical bandage on her neck told a story that no amount of smooth talking could erase.
Several women in the crowd covered their mouths in shock.
"That woman," I said, pointing directly at Margaret, "forced my wife into an unheated, mold-infested storage shed behind this house. When Gwen was diagnosed with Stage II lymphatic cancer five months ago, she begged my mother for $300 to pay for diagnostic imaging. My mother refused, called her a liar, and stole her car keys and phone."
"That's a lie!" Paige screamed from the fireplace, her face contorting with panic. "She’s crazy! She ruined her own hair with bleach! She’s trying to steal our money!"
"Is that right, Paige?" I said quietly.
I tapped the screen of my phone, which was wirelessly synced to the high-end surround-sound speaker system Margaret had installed in the ceiling.
A second later, Paige’s voice echoed loudly and clearly from every speaker in the room:
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"Who do you think looks better in a new truck, me or you? Look at yourself! You sold your hair for chump change while I’m buying Prada bags. Now shut your mouth and do the laundry, or I’ll tell Mom not to give you dinner tonight..."
The audio played on, crystal clear, capturing Paige’s cruel laughter and every vile insult she had hurled at a dying woman.
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